In Search of a Church

I think that the majority of this blog's readers are theologians (because they've clicked through from Mark's blog) Others may have religious affiliations of one sort or another; and I think that most are probably Christian. The Christian umbrella extends far -- from the very conservative to the more liberal.

On arriving in the US, we found ourselves unfamiliar with the layout of the Christian landscape (although Mark knows a lot more than I do). We decided that we would try out different churches to see what we think before deciding where to attend on a regular basis. We decided which church to attend each week by proximity to where we live, working outwards. We looked at their websites first; just to make sure that they weren't TV evangelists or any other sort of weird.

Some churches had written liturgies and traditional worship/hymns, while others had less formal, unwritten liturgies and contemporary worship styles. Personally, I like both styles.

The more formal churches have structure, the sermons (and services) tend to be shorter and many of the old hymns have much more about them than modern hymns/choruses. On the down side, I have a short attention span and get bored very easily, although the ability to follow the service in the prayerbook keeps me going. The churches that described their worship styles as "contemporary" tended to have choruses. Any hymns tended to be up-tempo.

In England, over the years, I have been to different types of churches. Some were traditional (with written liturgies), others had contemporary worship styles and others still practiced charismaticism. Here, although styles of worship varied between churches, there was no hint of charismaticism in any of them. I found this quite interesting because, in my experience, contemporary worship styles quite often (although not always) went hand in hand with charismaticism.

When we visited each church, we had to ask ourselves what we want from a church?

I think that the most important thing is that there is enough to keep the children engaged. We don't want them to get disillusioned with church. In many churches, children become disillusioned at around teenage. Often, this disillusionment with the church extends to a more general rejection of Christian beliefs. I think that this is caused by certain perceptions (whether true or not):

• that people within the church are judgemental
• that people with in the church are hypocritical
• that the church doesn't have adequate answers to questions being asked. When asking questions, they may be left with apologetic responses that don't satisfy.
• that they don't have any friends within the church
• that church services are boring

The most important thing is that we don't want Emily and Lauren to become disillusioned.

When we'd looked at quite a few churches and our radius was extending a bit farther than we'd like, we decided to take stock. We looked at all the churches we'd visited and discussed what we liked and what we didn't like about each one. We eventually settled on a medium-sized (by US standards) church with a contemporary worship style. We chose this church mainly because it was not too far from where we live and because it has a lot of children of Emily and Lauren's ages. We'll have to see how it goes from here.

(Source)